Numbers
by LSL and rubberducky64
Summary: Duke reflects on his childhood. PWP one-shot, may continue if I'm up for it. Angst galore, and worth a shot if you're down or need inspiration. By LSL


I have always been around numbers, my whole life. My room had numbers scribbled in marker on the drawers of my nearly empty dresser, numbers on the solitary lightbulb that swung from the ceiling, which was also smothered in numbers, numbers in the mattress I slept on. There were numbers on the few blankets I had, and numbers carved into the floor. Numbers painted onto the walls, numbers scratched into the glass of my pitiful excuse for a window, numbers numbers numbers were everywhere.

My dad was a compulsive gambler, and my mother was a helpless drunk. And I… Well, I was an accident that never should have happened. Seeing as that was my title, you can imagine how I was treated. Half the time I was ignored, and the other half I was yelled at and abused. They never let me out of the house – even though it was technically against the law for them to do so, because as you know, the law says that you have to go to school from the ages of six to seventeen. But they didn't care. If anyone asked, I was homeschooled. Not that anyone knew about me, of course. I was their dirty little secret.

Because my father gambled constantly, he always had poker chips and dice everywhere. Playing cards and paper receipts littered the floor, along with the shattered fragments of my mother's precious bottles. But I'm not talking about her yet. My father is now.

The numbers that were everywhere were records of his losses and wins, his debts and things people owed him. Mostly losses. I remember that he didn't dare write on his important receipts, because those could be _redeemed_ for _money_. Funny how he kept forgetting to redeem them.

He abused me, my father did. Not only did he hit me and mistreat my mind, he also molested and raped me. My mother would hold me down as my father would unthinkable things to his only son, all because he had lost that day a sum of money we didn't have. My mother, for all that she drank, was strong, and though she didn't fight back against my futile struggles, she wouldn't put up with it either. She'd gag me so the neighbors wouldn't hear me scream, she'd duct tape my hands together and then tie them to my father's brass bedframe, strip me naked and sit in the corner and watch as my father had his fill, waiting, in case she had to intervene.

When my father had finished with me, he'd hike up his pants and crawl off of me, and my mother would emerge from the shadows and none-too-gently untie me, pick me up and literally throw my shaking adolescent body onto the bare mattress in the cement-walled space that I called my room.

Most people, when they are six years old, only have to worry about whether they'll like the dinner that night, and whether their friends can play later that evening. When I was six years old, I had to worry about whether we had any food at all, and whether there was such a thing as friends.

One day, when I was about seven or eight, I decided I needed something to do, so I gathered up as many of my father's dice I could find and started lining them up by the amount of little dots they had on each side. That's how I learned my numbers, one through six. I soon taught myself how to multiply, divide, add, subtract, and do simple equations with those dice. I also used them as building blocks, building entire kingdoms that I was the ruler over. I hoarded those dice, only putting out just the right amount my father needed each day, and stealing them back when he was done. That's how I came to love dice – they were my only means of entertainment. I could write an entire book on all the hundreds and hundreds of things you could do with dice. That die that I had made into an earring was the first die I ever really played with.

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LSL: I don't know if I should leave it as a one-shot or keep going... I may make it a two parter if y'all want me to. Anyway, thanks or reading all of Otoogi's musing I wrote on a burst of inspiration.


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